Haunted Like Human performs at Viking Brewing Company Friday, May 23. The two-person folk band with Dale Chapman, lead singer and lyricist, and Cody Clark, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter, emphasizes storytelling and tradition in their music. Clark and Chapman believe that the human traditions of music and storytelling bring people “together on an intrinsic level” and are the basis of folk music. “It’s a tradition that we’re proud of and mindful of when we write,” they write in an email to Eugene Weekly. Haunted Like Human mostly plays original songs inspired by telling stories from Clark and Chapman’s own lives and those they collect during their travels on the road. During long sets, Haunted Like Human may play covers, often by artists like Noah Kahan, Caamp and Gregory Alan Isakov. “Music was something that always fueled me,” Chapman says. Chapman grew up singing in the school choir and playing the flute and guitar. Clark was part of a punk band in high school, but picked up classical guitar in college. Chapman and Clark met by chance in Nashville in 2017 when Chapman was working on a solo EP. They “clicked” immediately, Chapman says. She discovered that Clark played the guitar part on her songs more cleanly than she did, so she asked him to play for her entire EP. Chapman’s solo project turned into Haunted Like Human’s first album. Now, they have  an EP, Folklore (2018), and two full albums, Ghost Stories (2017) and Tall Tales & Fables (2021). The duo plans to release their next album, American Mythology, in October. “Success for us is someone telling us that our music helped them through a rough point in their life,” Chapman and Clark say. “That we were able to put words to their experience, meet them where they were at, and make them feel a little less alone.”

Haunted Like Human performs at 6 pm Friday, May 23, at Viking Brewing Company, 520 Commercial Street, unit F. The show is free to attend.